Wednesday, 9 March 2011

Cabo San Lucas

Cabo San Lucas

We dropped one of the 13 ton anchors in the bay of Cabo San Lucas, now about 900miles from LA. It was exciting to arrive there just as the sun was rising, and just as we were making our way to the gym. Normally I can’t shift out of bed at home until after 8, but here in US, everyone gets up quite early, and the gym is usually quite full by 7am.! So, an hour in the gym, pedalling and walking whilst gazing across at the imposing rocks and cliffs of the headland, with its famous archway and beautiful, pristine beaches. The town is still being developed so best to get there quick, before it becomes a sprawling mass of apartments. Our guide later told us that Bill Gates has a condo on the cliffs!

Cabo San Lucas is the southern tip of Baja California Sur, which confusingly is a state of Mexico. It is on the Tropic of Cancer, is very arid, average temp of 27 deg C. The hinterland appears very inhospitable and almost lunar. The tourist area is much like any other, and the town, which we did not visit has an array of designer shops. Why do such of the affluent people come here? Guaranteed winter sunshine, blue sky and sea, inexpensive lodgings, but most of all, the marine life. Apparently Jacques Cousteau named this area the “aquarium” of the world. There’s lots of sport fishing. You wake to sea lions calling near the cliffs. And best of all, pods of dolphins and whales can be easily seen particularly at this time of year. The whales travel here to give birth in the warm waters, and then once the calves have fattened up on the krill, and are strong enough, in a couple of weeks, they’ll travel up to Alaska. The biggest mammal migrates the longest distance- some 9000 miles- amazing.

Grey Whales

We learnt this and many other astonishing fact from our very informative guide, Tony, on a whale-watching trip, one of three that we’d pre-booked. Quite expensive, so we had to be careful about which we’d chose from the numerous ones on offer. It turned out to be well worth it- fantastically well-organised, very enlightening, and we got the most amazing views quite close up of several grey whales surfacing and flipping their tail fins in the air, just the way you’d hope they would. You can spot them early on, way off in the distance, with a jet of water spurting high into the air. As you get closer, you can hear them do this as well, and it’s awesome! You see the turquoise of the krill in the water, all around them ( the reason why they time their journey here is to coincide with the abundance of krill at this time of year). Another amazing fact- whales and dolphins are believed to have two hemispheres in the brain, and they shut one down, when they sleep, in order to rest it. However, because they have to breathe consciously, the other half reminds them to surface and breathe. So they constantly sink and surface to breathe, whilst resting their brains in sleep. Wonderful!

Cabo San Lucas

Anyway a very hot day today, with burning sun! I’ve been moaning about the weather being a bit poor, so I daren’t complain it’s too hot now. At 5pm. we raised the anchor and were back on our journey, southeastwards, down to Puerto Vallarta, another tourist hotspot, so we think.